Chris Barsanti's Blog, page 183
January 19, 2014
Reader’s Corner: Best Books of 2013
Best-of lists are particularly absurd when it comes to books, with thousands of titles being released in 2013 alone and easily hundreds of them most likely being worth forking over $25 for. But nevertheless it’s helpful to pull notable ones out of the stacks of new releases; otherwise where would you even get started?
To that end, I published a piece over atPopMatters with short writeups on my 15 favorite books of 2013. It’s a good collection with something for everybody, fantasy to military h...
January 17, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: January 17, 2014
97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is threatening the world; only 40 percent of the American public agrees. With science.
The manly manliness of Governor Big Fella; also his not-so-hidden similarities to Nixon.
Ah, the $8 Walmart khaki, with pleats!
Joe Scarborough’s moderation pitch: will this save the GOP or does extremism work?
Another 15 years like the last 15 and yes, humanity, you are toast.
Scully is an author.
The Sacramento Kings are now accepting Bitcoins.
A quick look insi...
January 16, 2014
Small Screens: ‘Batman’ Returns!
Christian Bale in a slightly different take on Batman than Adam West’s
Once upon a time you could safely rely on being able to find a couple things somewhere on TV, if you just flipped around long enough:The Three Stoogesand the oldBatmanseries. Running in seemingly near-constant syndication long after its too-brief run (120 episodes over 3 seasons from 1966–68), its Pop Art-mad cheeky humor wastheway that most people growing up in the 1970s was introduced to the Caped Crusader. Once Frank Mil...
New in Theaters: ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’
Chris Pine exploring a post-Cold War Moscow in ‘Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit’
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan was your basic all-around Cold War fighter, able to lead men into battle and synthesize data with equal ease; an analyst who knew his way around a battlefield. Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, and Ben Affleck have played him in the four movie adaptations of Clancy’s bestselling novels. Now, just a few months after Clancy’s passing, Kenneth Branagh’s new take on the series hits screens with Star Trek‘s...
January 15, 2014
Screening Room: Armond White and ’12 Years a Slave’
Some people just can’t handle the idea of consensus. Take, for example, the average bury-your-head-in-the-sand reactionary who swears up and down that the scientific community is just plain wrong about climate change.You also have Armond White, the film critic who’s forever tilting at windmills of his own devising. White is gifted with an unerring radar for what his fellow critics are going to rally around or despise, allowing him to furiously tack in the opposite direction, bellowing “Fools!...
In Books: James Frey Goes YA
The last time James “A Million Little Pieces” Frey was heard from, he was writing a novel about Christ calledThe Final Testament of the Holy Bible. There was some chest-thumping about howshockingit was going to be (“Be moved, be enraged, be enthralled by this extraordinary masterpiece” the press material said) but then it came out and promptly dropped from sight, as though he were the anti-Salman Rushdie.
Now, he’s cropped up again, this time with a $2 million deal for a YA novel calledEndgame...
January 12, 2014
Writer’s Corner: Detroit Book City
This could be your house
Still trying to figure out how to finish that first part of a six-part series of zombie CSI novels, or maybe you need time to work on your epic poem cycle about climate change? Working the job and paying rent can definitely take time away from time spent with your laptop or quill.
Well, worry no more, because there’s a new nonprofit organization called WriteAHouse that wants to give away houses in Detroit to writers. That’s correct: Free house to write in.
If approved, w...
January 10, 2014
Department of Weekend Reading: January 10, 2014
As a youngster, Jorge Luis Borges prowled the barrios of Buenos Aries with a dagger his father gave him, looking for the city’s famous knife-fighters.
Why Al-Qaeda is about to make the same mistake the U.S. did in Fallujah.
Tufts University study: Whites now believe they are the true victims of racial discrimination.
No, we care about the poor, we really really do.
CubeSats, the new, coffee mug-sized satellites.
Reader doesn’t get quite what they wanted, author provides refund.
The upsides and (big...
January 7, 2014
Best Movies of 2013: First Take
Since it’s a brand new year already featuring its own share of miserable, do-I-have-to-go-out-there? weather, what better time to sit back and figure out what exactly was the year that was? Film-wise, that is.
I contributed to a few of those lists at different websites this month. Over atPopMatters, you can see their gargantuan Top 35 films list here; they’ve also produced similar lists broken out into DVDs and foreign/indie films. Not to mention the year’s worst films.
Sarah Polley’s ‘Stories...
January 5, 2014
Reader’s Corner: Van Gogh and ‘The Jewish Bride’
‘The Jewish Bride’ by Rembrandt (1667)
Legend has it that after Vincent Van Gogh saw Rembrandt’s paintingThe Jewish Bride in Amsterdam—where it still hangs today in the renovated Rijksmuseum—he said this:
I should be happy to give 10 years of my life if I could go on sitting here in front of this picture for a fortnight, with only a crust of dry bread for food.
The math there might be a little on the extreme side (Van Gogh wasn’t one for half-measures, after all), but still, who wouldn’t say som...
